David's Repentance

2 Samuel 11:1-5, 26-27; 12:1-9

Grace to you and Peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Let’s just ignore this story and talk about Stewardship. 

This might be the one week when I am tempted to preach about anything that is NOT scripture. 

I mean, the questions this texts poses are so painful that it would be easier to lay out all my own personal financial history and practices and foibles and successes with money over the last 20 years than to deal with God has put in front of us today.

But I guess that’s not what you came here for.  Nor is it what I am called to do.

This is a stewardship text – it’s a case study of poor stewardship of David in how he uses his power and resources.

So… it is time for me to point out to you the good news and the bad news of this text.  The liberating gospel and the convicting law. 

Let’s start with Bathsheba:

What do you think she thought and felt when King David’s servant showed up at her door?

I have a message for you!  King David requests your presence at his home.  Now.

Did she feel excited? Honored? Curious? Worried?  Sick to her stomache? Did she know why she was being summoned there?  D

How do you think she felt when she was in King David’s presence? 

Do you think he tried to seduce her?  Was she ready to leap into his arms, having been alone a long time with her husband at war?

Did she wonder why the king was in town?  Wasn’t there a battle being fought?  Was she a bit offended that her king would be summoning women – her – while her husband fought on the battlefield?

Did she have any time to think?  Was she left alone in a room – maybe a bedroom – and wonder what on earth the king wanted with her?  Or did she know.  Did she know what was coming next?  Whether she wanted it to or not.

What was running through her mind when she realized she was pregnant?

Did she fear for her own life? 

Did she want to stop her pregnancy? 

Was she, being a lawful Hebrew (we know this because she was following the purity law), trying to find some honorable way out when she told the king?  Was she appealing to his mercy, knowing her pregnancy could lawfully result in her stoning? (Not the man’s, mind you, just hers).

How did she feel when she realized her husband had come home, but had slept outside rather than stay in their bed?

What did she think when the message came he had died? 

Did she know it was coming? 

Did she know there was no other way out for her?  Did she wish she had died in his place?

In what kind of situation did she find herself, once in David’s household? 

Was she isolated?  Did the other wives accept her?

Was she his favored wife?  Was she an embarrassment to him?

…

We won’t know.  The story doesn’t tell us. 

The story expects us to read it, over and over and over again, to glean what we can about who God is. 

And what do we learn about how little we know of Bathsheba’s thoughts, feelings and voice?

We know God is with her.

But that sure is small comfort when the child she bears dies.  Even if she was in the torturous position of having been raped and being forced to carry a child that was, through no fault of it’s own, a baby she would struggle to care for with the full love she would want to care for any child. Even this child.

We know God is with that baby too. Even though that baby dies at God’s very hand, as the story says.

Because this story is not about the baby or Bathsheba… obviously.

This story is about David. 

Why didn’t David go out to that battle? He was a great warrior with many successes under his belt. 

What possessed David when he saw a woman to believe he could just take her?  From another spouse at that!  Had his power gone to his head?  Did he believe he deserved everything he wanted at this point in his life?

How could David possibly forget God’s law when David was the one who was chosen by God to be God’s chosen king?  The one through whom God promised to fulfill God’s covenant.  Once again.

Why did David’s righteous anger take so long to come forth… how did he act so blindly?  So selfishly?  So brutally, at least to Uriah, without a shred of remorse, it appears… until Nathan told him a story?

And then Nathan.

This story isn’t really about him either.  But he plays the role of God’s mouthpiece. 

That sweet story, that sweet little lamb, the object of one man’s affection, taken, eaten, devoured really… by another man. 

And Nathan gets to do what I want to do in the story… what likely any woman reading this, and probably all the men too, want to say to David. 

You Are The Man.

You are the man who devoured the lamb.

You are the man who ignored God’s law.

You are the man who stole another man’s wife, using your power and privilege to damage her with unimaginable trauma and loss of her own body, her offspring, her spouse, her life.

You are the man who killed, so that you could have what you wanted. 

…

That is the law of this story—the driving conviction God makes of David and of anyone who uses their power and resources to abuse others.  And the law does just what the law is supposed to do—it brings about a change in David.

And David repents.

…

It’s almost anticlimactic.  There is no raging David at the end of this story defending his actions and his right to take what he wants.

…

David repents.

…

And the baby dies.

…

And God sticks with David.  I wouldn’t.    

But God uses even the scum of the earth if that is what God has to work with.

Just imagine what God has in store to do with you.

And me.  And all those with me who would have preferred to see God abandon David.  

But that is not our God. 

This is the good news – the gospel that liberates us… while we might choose to stay in a place of judgement and condemnation of David; God moves the instant David repents.

Our God demands repentance.  And our God accepts repentance. 

Our God loves us beyond and through absolutely anything we do to each other. 

And God demands we do better.

And God gives us the power to transform.

Because it wasn’t by his own power David repented.  It was only by the power of the Holy Spirit… leading him, guiding him, insisting that he grow beyond this terrible, unredeemable action.  Because while the action is absolutely unredeemable, the man is a different story.

This story. 

This sacred, holy story.  Of a man who repents, at God’s prompting.

And I wonder over what must have happened between him and Bathsheba after this … that his repentance includes a transformation in his relationship with Bathsheba.  That she is no longer his object, but a human with whom he relates, hopefully, even loves.  Those details are not exactly in the story either.

But that must be true.  For it is through these two people that Solomon is born.  And down the troubled line of this family that Jesus comes to us.

Jesus.  God in flesh who came to redeem the David’s and the Bathsheba’s of the world.

And you and me.

Jesus who left this world to hand it over to the Spirit.  The spirit that gifts us with so many redeemable qualities.  Aspects of ourselves that God would love to use, and does, often in spite of us, but maybe we will want to participate.  Hey, maybe you even want to come to the spiritual gifts inventory today and learn more about what God might be working in you right now.

The God who made you gifted, shows you how to love and redeems you from everything, is here, with us, breathing his Spirit right here in our midst. May you feel God’s outpouring love today.

Amen.